David McElroy

I stood in a park near my house the other day and watched people.

It was a normal scene. The new leaves of spring made the trees look green. The light came through in soft patches. People moved in both directions — talking, laughing, walking with purpose. Nothing about it would have caught anyone’s attention.

I was standing right in the middle of it.

I wasn’t pushed aside. Wasn’t ignored. Certainly wasn’t rejected.

But I didn’t feel part of the scene. I didn’t feel like those people. I somehow wasn’t one of them.

I could hear pieces of conversations as people walked past. I could tell who was relaxed and who was distracted and who was in a hurry. There was nothing unfamiliar about what I was seeing.

It felt like a scene that I was close enough to recognize, but not close enough to step into. I didn’t know how to belong there.

When I was younger, I would have reacted to that feeling differently. I would have felt some combination of frustration and anger. I would have assumed something needed to be fixed — either in me or in the world around me.

I would have tried to close the gap. I don’t feel that way anymore.

Keep Reading

I was waiting for my food at a restaurant early Monday morning when one of the employees came over to the counter to talk with me.

“I need to apologize to you for how I acted the other day,” she said quietly.

I was surprised, but I knew exactly what she was talking about. The last time I had seen her, she had been pretty rude. About five minutes after the place was supposed to be open that previous day — and after a couple of orders had been filled at the drive-through — I knocked on the drive-through window to let someone know the doors were still locked.

She was annoyed and she made that obvious. She and the other employees hadn’t gotten everything done before opening. There was stress or tension going on. She angrily blamed someone else at one point. She snapped at me a couple of times — as though I was somehow responsible.

I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t make a big deal about it. I just left and silently groused about how I had been treated.

And now — two days later — she was apologizing in a way that made it clear that she was sincere. She had clearly been bothered by the way she had acted.

Keep Reading

I used to be certain.

Not just confident or comfortable, but certain in the way only a young person can be when handed a complete system and told it explains everything. I had been taught a theology that divided the world neatly into what was true and what was false. It came with answers for every question that mattered and, more importantly, it came with the assumption that those answers were final.

I didn’t question it. Why would I? It was what I had been given. It felt like truth because it felt like home.

When I listen to people argue about theology now, I often recognize something uncomfortably familiar. I hear the same tone of certainty I once had. I see people defending systems they didn’t build but have fully embraced. They assume their conclusions are objectively true and everything else is objectively wrong.

I understand that mindset because I once lived there.

Keep Reading